Intel Aims to Bag Bigger Share in Networking

Intel, widely known for microprocessors, has also been a longtime player in connecting computers together. But it’s not satisfied.

The Silicon Valley giant claims it has greatly boosted the ability of its general-purpose processors to move high volumes of data around–approaching the capabilities of chips that were expressly designed for that purpose.

Rose Schooler, a vice president and general manager of Intel’s data center group, says in 2004 the company had chips that could ship 250,000 data packets per second. On Wednesday, by comparison, the company is introducing a combination of chips that it says can move 255 million packets per second.

Most of that work is done by x86 circuitry, the technology used for most PCs, Intel says. In addition to new Xeon chips, Intel is adding companion accelerator chips that handle particularly specialized jobs, like inspecting packets for security problems and encrypting them to guard against data theft.

Schooler is not suggesting that Intel is going to replace all special-purpose networking chips, which are designed by companies such as Cisco Systems. But she adds: “Where we think you can extend the use of general-purpose computing is probably a bit further than where they would.”

To give some idea why Intel is interested, Schooler sees a $16 billion market that Intel could target for its technology–a niche where it only has a 5% share today.

Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, said Intel has gradually been improving the accelerator chips that go with its processors to the point that the combination could begin to have an impact on companies like Cisco.

“When Intel gets focused on something and there is a fire burning underneath them, they are a lot more motivated and a lot more successful,” he said. “Unless they grow in networking, they have no chance of growing in the data center.”